Principal Engineer - League of Legends

Riot Games; Dublin (CA); On-site; USD 150,000 - 210,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Open PTO

Medical insurance

Dental insurance

Life insurance

Parental leave

Retirement match

Charitable giving

Job summary

Riot Games is seeking a Principal Software Engineer for League of Legends' Purchase Points theme. You will set technical direction across the game client, engine, UI, content, and service integrations, leveraging expert C++ and game-development experience to solve complex cross-team problems.

You will mentor senior engineers, influence architecture decisions, and collaborate with product, design, art, UX, QA, and production to deliver performant, reliable, and cohesive player experiences.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of professional software engineering experience.
• Expert-level C++ in large codebases.
• 6+ years in game development or related tech.
• Experience designing and shipping player-facing systems.

Responsibilities

• Set technical direction and lead architecture for initiatives across teams.
• Design and guide player-facing systems across client, engine, UI, content, tooling, and services.
• Identify cross-team risks and make tradeoffs for quality, performance and schedule.
• Improve system reliability, observability, and live-service operations.

Skills

Expert C++

Game development

Cross-team leadership

Mentoring engineers

Performance & profiling

Education

Bachelor's degree in CS

Job description

As a Principal Software Engineer on the League of Legends' Purchase Points theme, you will set technical direction for player-facing systems across the game client, engine, UI, content, and service integrations.

You will bring expert C++ and game-development experience to complex, cross-team problems - making sound architectural decisions, clarifying tradeoffs, and helping teams build experiences that are performant, maintainable, reliable, and cohesive. You will partner with Engineering, Product, Design, Art, UX, QA, and Production, and lead through influence rather than formal authority.

Responsibilities:

• Set technical direction and lead architecture for complex initiatives spanning multiple teams.
• Design and guide implementation of player-facing systems across client, engine, UI, content, tooling, and services.
• Identify cross-team technical risks and dependencies, and make tradeoffs across player experience, quality, performance, scope, and schedule clear.
• Raise the bar for system quality, reliability, observability, maintainability, and live-service operations, including participation in ongoing operational support, incident response, and root-cause analyses.
• Establish shared patterns and standards; review technical designs, RFCs, and implementation plans.
• Mentor senior engineers and Tech Leads, improve engineering workflows and developer experience, and represent the Purchase Points theme in broader architectural discussions.

Required Qualifications:

• 8+ years of professional software engineering experience, or equivalent experience delivering complex software systems.
• Expert-level C++ experience in large, complex, and long-lived codebases.
• 6+ years of professional game-development experience, or equivalent depth working on game clients, game engines, interactive products, or related technologies.
• Experience designing and shipping player-facing systems, with strong knowledge of architecture, performance, memory, concurrency, debugging, and maintainability.
• Experience setting technical direction across multiple teams or a broad product area without relying on formal authority.
• Experience working effectively with non-engineering partners and communicating complex problems and tradeoffs clearly.
• A track record of mentoring senior engineers and delivering multi-month or multi-year technical efforts with broad product or organizational impact.

Desired Qualifications:

• Experience developing around-game systems such as game UI, screens, client navigation, player journeys, progression, social, identity, shopping, or similar areas.
• Experience with proprietary game engines, content tools, pipelines, or authoring workflows.
• Experience with UI architecture, real-time performance profiling, or client integration with online services.
• Experience shipping and operating a live game or other globally distributed consumer product.
• Familiarity with League of Legends, or strong motivation to learn the game and its player experience.

Success in this role:

• Teams have clear technical direction and shared patterns for building around-game experiences.
• Cross-client, engine, UI, content, and service dependencies are surfaced and managed early.
• Senior engineers and Tech Leads make better decisions and lead more effectively through your guidance.
• Players experience responsive, reliable, cohesive around-game features.

For this role, you'll find success through craft expertise, a collaborative spirit, and decision-making that prioritizes the delight of players. We will be looking at your past studies, experience, and your personal relationship with games. If you embody player empathy and care about players' experiences, this could be your role!

Our Perks:

Riot focuses on work/life balance, shown by our open paid time off policy and other perks such as flexible work schedules. We offer medical, dental, and life insurance, parental leave for you, your spouse/domestic partner, and children, and Riot will support your retirement benefits with a company match, and double down on your donations of time and money to non-profit charitable organizations. Check out our benefits pages for more information.

At Riot Games, we put players first. That mission drives every decision in our quest to create games and experiences that make it better to be a player. Whether you're working directly on a new player-facing experience or you're supporting the company as a whole, everyone at Riot is part of our mission. And just like in our games, we're better when we work together. Our goal is to create collaborative teams where you are empowered to bring your unique perspective everyday. If that sounds like the kind of place you want to work, we're looking forward to your application.